 |
||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
| In which I expose myself to scorn and ridicule... by Belbo Jacopo 07/23/2007, 9:13pm PDT | ||||
 |
 |
|||
| ...by taking this question seriously in response to the Ebert's disapproving glare.
I think the most important step in approaching this question is specifying that to be "Art" the entire game, including the gameplay, plot, and production values are part of the artistry. A proper art game should still be fun to play and should incorporate the actual playing of the game as a portion of the artisticness. At the bottom of "art games" you have games whose plot, production, and gameplay lack any artistic merit, like Xenosaga. At the next rung you have games that are gushing with arty plot and production, but whose actual gameplay is a thin afterthought, like Rez or Killer7 or Darwinia At the next rung you have games with fun gameplay and an arty plot and production values, but the art doesn't connect to the gameplay at all, like Planescape or Immortal Defense. Finally you have what I think of as "true" art games, where the actual gameplay is part of the artistic experience. The only game like this I have played so far is "Shadow of the Colossus." Plotwise, it's equal to "The English Patient" with its tale of selfish love. Production value-wise the light-saturated visuals are a beauty to behold and just as one can admire "Citizen Kane" for all its camera tricks, one can admire all the tricks that Colossus pulls to squeeze such amazing visuals out of the aging PS2. And finally the gameplay is an integral portion of the artistic experience. You're engaging in titanic conflicts that seem all the more desperate by the game'play's display of your character's comparative frailty. Defeating these Colossi is viewed as impossible act of heroics in a way that the Hydra battle from "God of War" never accomplished. And then in the ending, where it's revealed that the main character was working for the devil and the "good guys" try to stop him and try to kill him to free him from demonic possession, the player is pissed, good or evil be damned, they fought and struggled to complete this bargain, and when they turn into the very kind of monster they were fighting against the whole game, they stomp the crap out of the good guys in an attempt to see their bargain through, thanks to the gameplay. If "A Clockwork Orange" could be an art film by making the viewer feel sympathy for a violent monster once the monster is set upon by his former victims, "Colossus" deserved that description and then some. I suppose "Out of this World" could also arguably be described as fully art, but Colossus is a much more obvious example. |
||||
 |
 |
|||
|
